Poo powered cars? It was on the BBC so it must be true!
Fuel made from human excrement, sewage, processed to make methane gas and used to power vehicles, in the case a VW bug. The vehicle is referred to as the bio bug 
The excrement from 70 homes is enough to power the car for 10,000 miles making it very fuel efficient.
The biogas system is very similar to the LPG systems that some cars and vans run on (our vehicles use LPG). The main concern of using a methane powered car or van in the past has been the performance, and GeneCo are confident that they have overcome that issue. If that is the case, the electric vehicle may have just become an also ran in the race for alternative fuels.
Electric vehicles have a very costly battery system and if a compressed methane system that will fit into the boot of a car and it has a bigger range – electric vehicles at the moment can only travel 50 miles before recharging, which makes them next to useless for the transport industry, then methane is the way to go.
The important little things -
- After processing, the methane does not smell
- Carbon emissions 3 tonnes per year, but is carbon neutral as the methane is being used and not ‘wasted’
- It is dual fuelled, like LPG
- Petrol ignites the engine and then the engine switches fuels
Fiat and Volvo are also developing methane powered vehicles, so it seems there will be a real alternative fuel race after all.
It will be interesting to watch who wins, and who sign writes their vans with ‘powered by poo’ 
Kev
Image credit – geek with laptop.com
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